Not in a hurry...

Getting to 400 miles for the year has been fairly difficult, not so much from a physical standpoint, but more of a mental and motivational standpoint.

I guess it's hard for me to actually get motivated to run right now with the distraction of the holidays and me not really training for anything in the coming weeks or months.

Right now I'm only 4 miles short of getting to 400 miles and it's something that I know I can do in a single run, which actually makes it less challenging since it's going to be so easy. I know, I know, I should just go out and just do it. This afternoon should be a fairly nice day so I might just go out and knock it out.

At the beginning of the year, Christine set a goal for us to run a collective 500 miles for the year, which I thought was definitely doable. That's like 3/4 of a mile a day. Little did I know that I would end up running 80% of that by myself! It's crazy now that I look back on it, but the motivation of training for a half marathon was really the catalyst for a lot of those miles.

I'm one of those people that needs that extra competitive reason to get things going, at least for right now. Having that training schedule helped and understanding that the schedule was necessary for helping me run a half marathon made the mileage more meaningful.

Right now I'm looking at some events for the early new year, some 5Ks and 10Ks further out. I'm definitely thinking of running a marathon later in the year and a half marathon thrown in their somewhere. But I'm somewhat content with getting through this year and then starting next year with a renewed effort.

One of those days

4:45 am and I have to run 6 miles?

It was one of those mornings when you think too much about how many miles you have to cover and it becomes a more daunting task the more you think about it. But it's running. I've run 6 miles before without problems. It's just a matter of getting through it when you're mind isn't into it.

I made it even more difficult on myself with the route I chose to take. I didn't feel like wandering too far away from the house so I ran a 2-mile loop near my house 3 times over. Running the same loop was the most boring thing I could do but at least I was in a consistently lit area. My normal 6 mile route would have been the route I use for my long runs which is a desolate boring run and I don't know how well lit it is.

The one good thing about this morning was that it was comfortable enough where I didn't have to wear running tights. It was short-sleeve shirt and shorts weather...in December! AWESOME! :) I know it's going to be short-lived though...the forecast indicates my Friday run is going to be chilly again, but at least it's not 6 miles.

I passed a milestone this morning with the 6-mile run. I have officially completed 1 mile per day for the entire year. I'm currently at 366 miles completed. It wasn't really a goal that I had set out to do at the beginning of the year, but by the time September rolled around, and with the mileage that I was piling on with my half-marathon training, I knew it was an achievable goal but it was going to be pretty close.

So I'm going to celebrate by...taking a day off.